White Blindfold School Of History Analysis

Kim Scott is not the only person that feels reluctant to participate in the history wars. Many scholars agree that the conservative voices (labelled as white blindfold school of history) are not worth of being met on an equal level, as their argumentations often lack proof and consistency. Yet, a great number of scholars concern themselves with the question how people like Keith Windshuttle can still hold on to their argument and in addition find a audience willing to believe him. What Klaus Neumann suggests in But is it History? is that their arguments are based on fear, namely the fear to loose the security history has provided for the nation. (Cf. Neumann 2008 29) According to him the main concern of the white blindfold school of history
A frightening large number of people seem to not think through the argumentations before making the decision on whom to vote for or whom to trust. What can be concluded from this is that the freedom for everybody to express their opinions about everything and the right for everybody to participate in processing the past and influencing the present and the future of a culture, a nation, the world, comes with a price. Nevertheless this does not mean this freedom should be abolished, instead one has to learn to cope with a large variety of different opinions. Concerning contemporary societies and politics, the concept of tolerance suggests itself. This concept, however, is often confused with acceptance and approval. Yet, tolerance has it’s origin in the Latin word tolerare, meaning to endure (even if it does not coincide with one’s own moral values). (Cf. Wermke 419) Literature can help to ensure an almost equal voicing of different people’s views, even though the status of the respective text
He states that, even though the “history warriors”, as he calls them, won the war, scholars show no significant change in their approach on Australian history. (Cf. Attwood, 2010 42) The fact that seminars about processing the past in Australia are held at European Universities and that students may choose to write a paper or thesis on different concepts of remembering the past, shows how modern societies are open to discuss concepts like history. This is good news for those people who fight for the inclusion of Aboriginal history into Australia’s history as a nation. Nevertheless critical voices are raised and terms like recolonizing appear in different contexts. The western approach on dealing with history, and other academic fields, is still the dominant one. Even of those who claim to give a voice to marginal groups, in this case Aboriginal Australians, the majority are western people with little or no relation to the respective groups. Although Benang first and foremost merely addresses the questionable concepts it also contains a suggestion for improvement of dealing with history, which is elaborated in chapter